If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough,
Headlong, the waterfall must come,
Oh, let it, then, be dumb--
Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now."[70]
Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a water-fall to
be silent, if it is not to hang listening: but with what different
relation to the mind that contemplates them! Here, in the extremity of
its agony, the soul cries out wildly for relief, which at the same
moment it partly knows to be impossible, but partly believes possible,
in a vague impression that a miracle _might_ be wrought to give relief
even to a less sore distress,--that nature is kind, and God is kind,
and that grief is strong; it knows not well what _is_ possible to such
grief. To silence a stream, to move a cottage wall,--one might think
it could do as much as that!
I believe these instances are enough to illustrate the main point I
insist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy,--that so far as it is a
fallacy, it is always the sign of a morbid state of mind, and
comparatively of a weak one. Even in the most inspired prophet it is a
sign of the incapacity of his human sight or thought to bear what has
been revealed to it. In ordinary poetry, if it is found in the
thoughts of the poet himself, it is at once a sign of his belonging to
the inferior school; if in the thoughts of the characters imagined by
him, it is right or wrong according to the genuineness of the emotion
from which it springs; always, however, implying necessarily _some_
degree of weakness in the character.
Pages:
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119